Highway 401 Widening - Highway 8 to Townline Road

[Canard]

All people need to do is look at the lane markings.

High-frequency double-thick markers to your left? Your lane is ending. Regular frequency, regular thickness? Carry on.

Of course, most people just travel (any mode) on autopilot and don’t think.

[danbrotherston]

All people need to do is look at the lane markings.

High-frequency double-thick markers to your left? Your lane is ending. Regular frequency, regular thickness? Carry on.

Of course, most people just travel (any mode) on autopilot and don’t think.

The on ramp at King St. does have double width markers...

[Canard]

Bizarre. I can see that now from the satellite view. Well, that goes against what I believed I understood the rules to be.

[timio]

Speaking from experience, this configuration is atypical, when I merge onto the highway, I generally need to merge left out of the merge lane, I use the King St. and Sportsworld onramps once in a while, and rarely remember that it continues as a lane.

Anecdotally, this seems to be most people, and generally people merge left at a slower speed than the flow of traffic causing a minor annoyance to extreme safety hazard.

[timio]

I've done this a few times, instead of using the NB>WB ramp - I know, I know... dick move...

The other move is the skip the line from 8 NB to 7/8 WB move. I'm guilty of doing this, but after getting up freakishly early and commuting back from Toronto, I'm slightly impatient to get home by this point.

[Canard]

Oh, you mean, instead of queueing in Lane 3 (if counting from the right), you go in Lane 4 (which goes onto King St), then you cut in at the last possible moment to go through the cloverleaf?

...as someone who uses lane 4 to go from the highway onto king st, and thus must lay on the horn nearly every single day at people who do this, thanks.

[timio]

You're welcome.

I'm of the view that if there isn't a gap large enough for me to fit in without having to slow people behind me, I'll take the back way across to Courtland as my punishment for attempting a shortcut.

[clasher]

As a "lane 4" guy I love the side-eyes people give me when I scoot up the side while they are all slowed down; expecting me to cut them off.

[jamincan]

I'm sure a fair number of people on those interchanges are just used to merging left, and do so, but I have to believe that around 4pm when I'm normally going by, most people are commuters heading home, and yet I'd estimate well over 3/4 merge left immediately.

[plam]

Speaking from experience, this configuration is atypical, when I merge onto the highway, I generally need to merge left out of the merge lane, I use the King St. and Sportsworld onramps once in a while, and rarely remember that it continues as a lane.

Anecdotally, this seems to be most people, and generally people merge left at a slower speed than the flow of traffic causing a minor annoyance to extreme safety hazard.

So when I did my driving test in Quebec I never had to do any highway driving (confirmed with family who may have done their test more recently than 25 years ago), but in Ontario you definitely have to merge onto the highway at highway speeds on your test. I got dinged for that on my dinky motorcycle which isn't super good at doing 100 km/h.

[jeffster]

Speaking from experience, this configuration is atypical, when I merge onto the highway, I generally need to merge left out of the merge lane, I use the King St. and Sportsworld onramps once in a while, and rarely remember that it continues as a lane.

Anecdotally, this seems to be most people, and generally people merge left at a slower speed than the flow of traffic causing a minor annoyance to extreme safety hazard.

I guess is sometimes depends on the merge lane; a shorter lane makes it more difficult to get to 100 km/h, and this is especially true if you have an insurance app or OBD 2 attachment and you get dinged for any 'heavy' acceleration even if it's meant to merge onto fast moving traffic.

That said, personally, I try to get up to speed before pulling into the merge; what pisses me off are these clowns driving at 125 using the far right lane to scoot around traffic in the left hand lane, making it impossible to merge safely.

[danbrotherston]

Anecdotally, this seems to be most people, and generally people merge left at a slower speed than the flow of traffic causing a minor annoyance to extreme safety hazard.

So when I did my driving test in Quebec I never had to do any highway driving (confirmed with family who may have done their test more recently than 25 years ago), but  in Ontario you definitely have to merge onto the highway at highway speeds on your test. I got dinged for that on my dinky motorcycle which isn't super good at doing 100 km/h.

In Ontario, it depends on where you do your driving test...   In rural parts of Ontario that are not near a controlled access expressway, drivers do not go on the highway during their test.

[Rainrider22]

As a "lane 4" guy I love the side-eyes people give me when I scoot up the side while they are all slowed down; expecting me to cut them off.

I do the same. I commute 5 to 6 days a week from gta. The people who que up so early in the farthest right lane are fine to be there. Don't be upset with people who utilize the nest lane. That's why they make it a two lane ramp option. It is legal and highly efficient. It is the very people that panic and give you the aside eyes that are the problem. Focus on where you are driving and where you are going.

[Canard]

The dangerous maneuver is using the far left lane to bypass the second-from-the-left (queued) traffic to go around the cloverleaf onto 7 toward Stratford. This is most certainly the only lane you can be in to take this exit.

As someone who exits onto king st (leftmost lane), this is terrifying when people ahead of you suddenly slam on their brakes (from 90 km/h) to try and ram in st the last possible moment because they were impolite and couldn’t possibly queue like the rest of us good-natured Canadians.

The same thing happens in lane 3; two lanes of people going up 85 and suddenly someone decides to cut left into lane 3.

[ijmorlan]

Question about lane numbering: I think everybody in this thread is using Lane 1 to mean the rightmost lane. I always assumed lanes should number from the left outward, mostly because lanes most commonly are added and removed on the right. So in the typical case, an add or remove just adds or removes a lane, without changing the numbering of the other lanes. So over the course of a typical highway, “Lane 1” would be a continuous lane, which may some places be the only lane, other places the leftmost of 2, and in a few places the leftmost of 3, depending on the segment of highway in question. Of course there is more complexity in some of the large freeways.

Does anybody know what terminology road designers use?